This serial was made in the western style. There were even log cabins, and covered wagons. Ace Drummond (John King) sang a song throughout the serial - always the same song - rather like Gene Autry. There was plenty of aerial action in those motorized box kites called biplanes, but no chases on horseback, which seemed odd since this was set in Mongolia. There wasn't a cartoonish brawl every chapter, which was nice. The plot wasn't very strong, and when the identity of The Dragon was revealed in the final chapter, it didn't make much sense. The dialog and acting were good for a movie serial, though there were a few laughs there.

I downloaded the 512Kb MPEG4 files. The first few chapters showed much wear, but they got much better. The last seconds of chapter 12 are missing, but I'm sure they revealed nothing.

In some chapters, Molgolian police wear caps worn by Bolsheviks in Russia.

I thought this serial was interesting for the character of "the Lama", the benevolent eastern holy man. Like most serials it has too many plot twists and dead ends to maintain a unity of story, but yes, it is way better than "undersea kingdom"

I found this searies most interesting on the grounds of purly the historical viewpoint. I tryed to put myself in the day. Just the excitment which was then reminded of the excitment of when the first man steped on the moon. It must have been of great excitment when man was just crossing the atlantic by air and the pacific had yet to be concorred. I can see why it was made as they used current footage of newsreels of the time.

i have downloaded all part- and all have no sound; how come?
Bernhard

This serial is not as good as Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe or Radar Men From the Moon (which are themselves pretty bad except for laughs), but it is marginally better than Undersea Kingdom, which is truely dreadful.

Again, source quality hardly justifies such large files, but overall this is a classic serial of its type. At 66, I remember Saturday matinees with just such serials and debates among us through the following on how the hero or heroine would get out of the scrape in which the director left him/her.

(One trick of the director was to change the story between the end of a chapter and its recap the next week - the peril seemed easier to resolve when they made up fresh rules.)

This serial has almost no sound (my sound card was turned to High) yet it has a singing pilot ? These thrillers are a treasured memory of my childhood (I am 67 years young) when the Saturday afternoon movies featured a serial and a cartoon as well as a feature for the princely sum of 9 cents.
The serials were ludicrous but entertaining, and are great for giving todays youth an idea of the good old days.